There is no news but bad news. Austria seems
to have internalised this wisdom. To make headlines in the global media,
Austria does its best: if it is not a cruel story about a man who imprisoned
his daughter for years and fathered a number of children with her, it must be
the revival of hard-right political sentiment. As if on cue, in the general election
of 28 September 2008 two extremist rightwing parties - xenophobic,
anti-European, and with a strong flavour of Nazi nostalgia - attracted 28% of
the votes. Anton Pelinka is professor of political science and nationalism studies at the Central European University, Budapest, and director of the Institute of Conflict Research, Vienna. Among his books are (co-edited with Ruth Wodak) The Haider Phenomenon(Transaction, 2002), and Democracy Indian Style: Subhas Chandra Bose and the Creation of India's Political Culture(Transaction, 2003)

Also by Anton Pelinka in openDemocracy:

"Austria's sour victory"
(6 October 2006)
True, this outcome represents also a
legitimate protest against the do-nothing government the centre-left Social
Democratic Party (SPÖ) and the centre-right People's Party (ÖVP) had been responsible
for since January 2007. But there were other
options for articulating this protest. Among them were the centrist Liberal
Forum (LIF), which was again unable to overcome the 4% threshold to qualify for
a place in the national council (parliament); and the Green Party, which did
not profit from the protest and even lost a moderate number of votes.

A
modern triumph

Thus it turned out that the main losers were
the parties of the ruling coalition, the SPÖ and the ÖVP; and the main -
indeed, taken together, the only - winner the Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the
Association for Austria's Future (BZÖ). Both are in the tradition of the
"pan-German" camp - a tradition which includes the history and narrative of the
Austrian Nazi Party. The FPÖ was formed in 1955 under the chairmanship of a
former SS general. The BZÖ is the strategic brainchild of Jörg Haider, who
broke away from the FPÖ in 2005 amid strains over his efforts never to allow it
to forget his and the FPÖ's roots.
Indeed, he is on record praising Hitler's employment policy and honouring
SS veterans. His successor as leader of the FPÖ, Heinz-Christian Strache, was
until quite recently involved in hardcore neo-Nazi activities.

These facts are far from unknown. The FPÖ's
and BZÖ's leaders' records, and their associated views on migration and
European integration, have been widely advertised in Austria. Their wild agitation against migrants,
especially those with a Muslim background; their populist sloganising as a
weapon of political attack; their use of the European Union a convenient
scapegoat for everything the Austrians may find negative (mass transit through
Austria, a slight increase of inflation, and the crime rate - even if all data
show that crime is going down in Austria).

Austrian society is full of contradictions.
Most Austrians are better off in economic terms than ever before. Everybody agrees
that the country is profiting substantially from the European Union enlargement
of 2004 when four of Austria's neighbours (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia) joined the union. But many Austrians stubbornly believe that their
individual situation is worsening; and for this perception, they are punishing
whoever is there to be punished.

But the reality is even worse: for as large
numbers of Austrian voters did not just leave the major traditional parties but
moved to the far-right, this is a kind of stubbornness that borders on
self-molestation. If the "protest vote" had been centrist, within the moderate
framework of the party system (Green
or Liberal, for example), there would have been no outcry - nor a debate about
a decline in the quality of Austria's democracy. A different vote for parties belonging
to established European party families is a normal democratic tremor; that for
extremist outsiders is an earthquake. But hundreds of thousands Austrians
decided to move to the extreme right - fulfilling the familiar stereotype (back
to those headlines - and more than a few media commentaries) that Austria still
refuses to learn its lesson from the past.

The election results, and the change they
represent since the previous election on 1 October 2006, are summarised in
Table 1.

Results

SPÖ

ÖVP

FPÖ

BZÖ

Greens

Others

Percentage of votes

29.4

26.0

17.7

10.8

10.1

6.0

Seats

58

51

34

21

19

0

2006-08, change

-10

-15

+13

+14

-2

0

(Source: Bundesministerium
für Inneres,
2 October 2008 - without some of the absentee votes which could still mean the
shift of one seat from one to another party)

The two major parties had their worst result
in their history. Since the foundation of the democratic republic in 1945, the
Social Democrats have never fallen below 30%. The ÖVP's worst result had been
in 1999, when it received 26.9%; now it has sunk even lower.

The FPÖ and the BZÖ together have now also
achieved a result that exceeds the FPÖ's triumph in 1999, when the
still-unified party also won 26.9% of the vote and - as a consequence of this
electoral success - joined the ÖVP in a coalition that lasted from 2000 to
2006 (see "Austria's sour victory", 6 October 2006).

The remorseless decline of the two main
parties has not resulted in the arrival of any new party in parliament.
Austria's otherwise perfect system of proportional representation imposes the
requirement that a party must win 4% of the votes to qualify for seats in
parliament: this has proved too much for the Liberals (who were represented in
1993-99); the protest party List Fritz Dinkhauser ("Fritz"), which tried to profit from regional
dissatisfaction in Tyrol; the Communist Party; and a grouping of Christian
fundamentalists.

Region, generation, education, gender,
class

What can explain all this? One aspect which is
difficult to interpret is the relationship between the two extreme-right
parties. The reason for the split in 2005 was both strategic and personal. This
helped create an expectation that only one of the two could survive as a
relevant factor. Now, both are becoming stronger - and with a more or less
similar agenda.

The real difference between the FPÖ and BZÖ is
regional. The BZÖ is first and foremost a phenomenon of Carinthia (where Haider
is governor, and his party dominates regional politics). This remains true even
though this time (in contrast to 2006) the BZÖ got a significant share of votes
even outside Carinthia. The FPÖ is more of an all-Austrian party, and is
especially strong in urban areas like Vienna. It is also rather weak in the
BZÖ heartland of Carinthia.

More broadly, the changing trends in Austrian
society over the last twenty years can help illuminate these results. During
this period an evolving generation gap made its impact felt: with older voters
remaining the backbone of the two major parties (SPÖ and ÖVP), younger ones
disproportionally preferring the Green Party, and the FPÖ also doing quite well
among the young (but much less so than the Greens). In 2008, this has changed
quite dramatically: young people have moved to the FPÖ, with about one-third of
the 16-29 age group voted for the FPÖ.

This trend is represented in Table 2:

Percentage of / voting for

SPÖ

ÖVP

FPÖ

BZÖ

Greens

16-29 years

14

20

33

10

14

30-44 years

22

22

20

11

16

45-59 years

33

24

13

13

10

60-69 years

36

29

14

9

5

70 years and older

36

32

15

11

2

(Source: Fritz Plasser & Peter A Ulram, Die Wahlanalyse 2008: Wer hat wen warum
gewählt? - a manuscript, presented to the media on 29 September 2008, based
on a survey by GfK Austria).

The Greens have lost their pole-position among
the young and started to become a party with a middle-aged electorate. But
neither the SPÖ nor the ÖVP profited from this trend - the party attracting
most of the young voters was the FPÖ.
Also on national elections in 2008 in
openDemocracy:

Plus:
regular comment and analysis on elections in Russia,
the United States,
the United Kingdom in openDemocracy's
sections
This is of particular interest because Austria
was (in 2007) the first among European democracies to lower the voting age from
18 to 16. A twist in this story is that the only party opposing this
constitutional change was the FPÖ - the very party which has (in the first
election under the new rule) most benefited.

In respect to gender, the FPÖ is still a
predominantly male party: the ratio between the percentage of male and female
voters ("gender gap") was 20% to 16%. The prototype of the FPÖ voter is young
and male - and without higher education. Among the voters with higher education,
the FPÖ was able to win only 12% and the BZÖ 8% (against the SPÖ's 25%, the
ÖVP's 27%, the Greens' 19%). The Greens and the ÖVP are still the two parties
with an disproportionate percentage of votes coming from Austrians with higher
education.

The FPÖ (in an echo of progress made by other
European rightwing "populist" parties) has become the dominant party among the
working class. Among skilled blue-collar workers, the FPÖ got 34% (against the
SPÖ's 32%); among non-skilled blue-collar workers, the difference between the
FPÖ (34%) and the SPÖ (21%) was even more significant. The FPÖ has
re-established its dominant position as the party a majority of working-class
voters prefer - which was clearly the case as early as 1999. The SPÖ has lost
its leading position among its traditional core electorate.

What
is to be done?

In many respects, the result of the 2008
election is indeed a repeat of that in 1999. The same elements - a significant
decline in the two major parties, especially of the conservative ÖVP; a
dramatic rise in the extreme-right vote - are there. In that sense the 1999
outcome augurs ill - for the SPÖ, preferring a coalition with the ÖVP, failed
to convince the conservatives to re-enter such an alliance; while the ÖVP,
reacting to the shocking result, used the FPÖ's success to form a coalition
with the far-right.

Austria's political system is a parliamentary
one - which means that no government can be formed against the will of the
national-council's majority. Thus, the next weeks and probably months will be
used for dealing and wheeling between the parties. Two options are ruled out -
the Greens don't have the numbers to build a majority with either of the two
major parties; and as the SPÖ has ruled out (before and after the elections) any
coalition with either the FPÖ or the BZÖ. This leaves three possible outcomes:

* a revival of the (not-so-grand) coalition
between the SPÖ and the ÖVP. This is the solution the SPÖ prefers - and
probably the federal president, who can play the role of a go-between

* a revival of 1999 - a coalition between the
ÖVP and the far-right. This would be more complicated today than nine years
ago, because both the FPÖ and the BZÖ are needed for a majority and the
relationship between those two still seems to be rather hostile

* a minority cabinet of the SPÖ, indirectly
backed by an at least informal agreement of tolerance between the Social
Democrats and either the ÖVP and/or the two far-right parties.

The third scenario is only realistic after a
period of intense bargaining between the parties which does not result in a
majority coalition.

But more important than the mechanics of
coalition-building is the wider dilemma for Austrian society and the Austrian
polity: how it comes to terms with the latest example of its notoriety within Europe: entry in the Guinness book of records
as the country with the biggest share of extreme-right votes since 1945.

Some Austrian intellectuals seem to despair.
All the recipes have been tried: more civic education, more debate about
Austria's involvement in the Nazi crimes, more discourse about xenophobia,
anti-semitism and racism. No doubt, more of the same is better than nothing.
But there is a quotation going around among Austrians reflecting intellectual
resignation: Karl Kraus's dictum that Austria is hopeless but not serious.

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